Telecom Cost Management Featured Article

AOTMP Research Presents Contrasting Views of IT and Telecom

AOTMP has released its latest research report, CFOs' and CIOs' Perspectives: A Top-Down View of IT and Telecom Management. This report, which relates to a variety of business process fields including telecom cost management, shares the views of leaders in finance and IT, with more than 275 survey respondents contributing.

Finding alignment in many topic areas, report shows that 69 percent of CFOs and 67 percent of CIOs rank optimization of technology management as the top priority for their IT group. Also, 63 percent of enterprises want to continue to place emphasis on aligning IT and business goals. Reduction in spending on IT and telecommunications came third in management priorities for enterprises.

AOTMP also found, however, that these two groups do experience some degree of contrasting views. IT ultimately holds responsibility for managing telecom expenses, and telecom cost management initiatives are most commonly driven by finance. Typically, Finance has to lead advocating the establishment of formalized telecom cost management programs. The survey revealed that when it comes to managing telecom expenses, 69 percent of CFOs rank strategy development as the top priority while 21 percent of CIOs rank it as a priority.

Joe Basili, vice president of Research for AOTMP and author of the report, said in a statement that these findings indicate that finance continues to be more strategic in developing a plan for managing this significant business expense, while IT focuses on the tactical work. He pointed out that for the benefit of the enterprise, IT departments need to put focus on strategic development as their peers in finance do.

The AOTMP survey also shows that enterprises often do not have effective information available to IT and telecom to understand and identify the greatest opportunities to reduce expenses. Savings from unexpected areas can be achieved through telecom cost management programs that make key data readily accessible for decision making.

The research firm explains that while one person may see an opportunity to negotiate better rates, another might seek to pool users together to address variations in monthly consumption. On the same note, another person might see an opportunity to install a GSM gateway to change calls from fixed-to-mobile to mobile-to-mobile network calls.

AOTMP's president and CEO Tim Lybrook said that one of the most common and critical oversights they have seen in their work with thousands of enterprise telecom and IT environments is a lack of leveraging information about the environment.

Lybrook believes that the data behind enterprise telecom and IT is the most powerful and useful tool for making decisions in technology management, growth, and budgeting.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers whitepapers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is VoIP Doesn’t Require Any Phone Equipment Investment, brought to you by Accessline.

Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.

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